In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.

This biography of entertainment legend Sammy Davis, Jr. is an enthralling portrait of one of the most recognizable figures from the golden age of American show business. Davis, a guarded man who protected his private life with great vigor, lived an extraordinary life in the limelight, while also forging new uncharted paths across racial lines.

It's funny how the book starts with the chapter about Sammy's autobiography, Yes I Can. It talk of how the polished stack of mistruths was thrown together to glorify Sammy. But, this book, revealing many of his flaws, still makes him out to be a truly loving soul and probably one of the greatest entertainers we will see for many many years.

Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

Before he became a novelist, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter, covering the detectives who worked the homicide beat in Florida and Los Angeles. In vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the reader past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends, and, of course, the killers, to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath.

This book does show that Connelly is a great newspaper writer, but reading a series of newspaper articles is not as interesting as reading an in-depth book. Some of the stories are famous cases and all of them are interesting and well written scraps of journalism, but you don't get much else. Perhaps if more was said about what sort of legwork went into each piece, maybe a story or two about the actual writing of the story from Connelly would have made this a much more satisfying read.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century

When scholars write the history of the world 20 years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004", what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing?

I picked this up after hearing my parents ignorant baby boomer friends complain about out-sourcing. I felt this book gave a pretty good picture of the shape of the world we live in and made me feel regret that I never finished my engineering degree.

The Lovely Bones

It may be difficult to imagine a life-affirming book which begins with the main character, a 14-year-old girl, recounting her rape and murder, but Alice Sebold's debut novel is just such a book. Having received advance critical acclaim that before now was reserved only for literary giants, this book will no doubt invite comparisons to works such as Tracy Chevalier's The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Basically, if you're the type of person that gets excited about sales at certain department stores, this is an exciting adventure for you. It starts out great, an account of a rape/murder victim in her first-person after her death. The only thing is nothing really interesting happens to anyone she watches over. I have to gather that the author had some real writing skills yet hasn't really had much life experiences. I put this down somewhere near the end. I really didn't care what happend...

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